


Jonah

by Miniveth (Heso)



Category: Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:03:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8101687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heso/pseuds/Miniveth
Summary: The apologia of J. Jonah Jameson, in the style of Wicked.





	

One man's obsession is another man's dedication. 

I demand results, sure. Cub reporters always say it's impossible to find what I assign, until they do. My rule of thumb is, if all it takes is a bit of shoe leather, it wasn't as important a story as it could have been. Some of them manage it, and they have great careers ahead of them, or will if I keep this institution alive. Some of them don't, and they go do something less challenging. Listicles, probably. Or PR. 

There are four times as many people working in PR as in journalism today. Did you know that? The sea we swim in.

Sure, a lot of what I put out is dreck. That’s the business of newspapers, you grab people’s attention and excitement. It pays the bills. Yellow journalism, clickbait - only the name is different. What distinguishes the good newspaperman is, he uses the pap to subsidize the important stuff. In the Sixties the Bugle was the first - outside of Amsterdam News and those, obviously - to go after the NYPD for brutality. Later we exposed the landlords who drove out their tenants and let half the Bronx burn down, and their more "respectable" silent partners too. Our pieces helped the Justice Department take down the Gotti family. Those stories are the real work, and sometimes they even sell. Not enough, not usually. So, actors, capes, and puppies.

(Has a superhero ever stopped a cop from shooting an unarmed black man? Not as far as I've ever been able to tell. If the cops are there, they aren't.)

Every so often a kook in primary colors comes along and tries to set himself up as dictator or something. But to me, we’re living under one of those kooks, and have been since 1980 when Mr. Teflon was elected. Kids today don’t know what it was like then. Someone who got up there and said all our national values were garbage. Didn’t care if anyone had jobs, if they could breathe the air, if they were treated with basic human decency, said the best thing ever was for rich people to get richer, and screw anything and anybody in their way. And the people cheered him on. I seriously wondered if there’d been some mass brainwashing or something - this was supervillain-caliber work - but I guess the signs had been there, it just snuck up on me. And now, well, we all live in his world. 

So I do what I can. 90% of everything is crap, and that applies to my pages, but it keeps the institution going, so for the sake of the other 10% that might do some good. If the powerful ignore us - which they can afford to do more and more these days - I can at least say I’ve kept hundreds of people employed. Healthcare, pensions, all that. I take care of my people. Will for as long as I can.

Spider-Man? Even before the internet, he was never a top seller for the paper. When I go after him, it’s in service of a point, which people would learn if they ever read the editorial page. Sure, there are other capes who do more collateral damage, George Zimmermans in Lycra. I chose him _because_ of his whole wisecracking Boy Scout shtick. He controls himself, he at least tries, but he still goes out night after night as if muggers and low-level drug dealers are the root problem with the city, as if knocking heads the best way he can make his mark. (Never saw _The Wire_ , I guess..) Even if his parents were killed by muggers or something, he should have realized by now he’s not deterring a thing. City of this size, hundreds of robberies a week, thousands of violent crimes, not a crook in the world thinks he’s going to catch them; it’s like being struck by lightning. There’s a reason we want the state to be the only one knocking heads ("monopoly on violence", the academics call it), and it’s not because the state is the "good guy", but because the state is _accountable_. You need this army of trained professionals who will follow procedures, collect evidence, testify, but they won't be effective unless the public trusts them, and they'll only do that if they know that a cop hurts them, or violates their rights, he'll be brought to justice too. (Not that that describes the NYPD as it is or ever was, but it’s perfectly achievable.) More fundamentally, what you need is to provide the jobs, housing, and social services people so desperately need, but you can’t help people up with a fist. You can only punch. 

And that’s the problem with Spider-Man. When you get right down to it, his outlook is Giuliani's.

It’s a small part of the work, but if I can get the public to realize even this photogenic ham is part of the problem, I’m convinced that will help push us toward a better society, one where the government and economy works for everyone, not just the billionaires. 

It might even come in my lifetime. Stranger things have happened.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm probably not the first to do this, but the urge possessed me. 
> 
> Generic Marvel of no particular continuity, except for the implication the comics, movies, etc. have unreliable narrators.
> 
> My first piece. Comments welcome.


End file.
